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God With Us Book Event With Kathleen Norris Contents
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FeaturesNow Hiring a Director of Development at Image Click here for a complete job description and list of qualifications. God With Us Book Event: An Evening with Kathleen Norris In anticipation of the Advent and Christmas season, Image journal invites you to an evening featuring award-winning poet, writer, and speaker Kathleen Norris. The event will be held at the Seattle Art Museum in downtown Seattle on November 8, 2008, at 7:30 p.m. Author of New York Times bestsellers The Cloister Walk, Dakota, and Amazing Grace, Norris will give a thought-provoking talk on the countercultural pursuits of Christmas. The event will also feature the book God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe. God With Us is a beautifully illustrated collection of daily meditations for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, and includes scripture selections, master works of art, and reflections from writers such as Kathleen Norris, Luci Shaw, Eugene Peterson, Scott Cairns, and others. In addition to Norris's keynote, the event will include a reception and book signing. To RSVP, contact Julie Mullins at (206) 281-2988 or jmullins@imagejournal.org. Home by Marilynne Robinson
This month Marilynne Robinson follows her transcendent 2004 novel Gilead by returning to the eponymous Iowa town. Home treats the same time period and some of the same events, this time from the point of view of the neighbors. Readers will recognize Reverend Ames's best friend, Reverend Boughton, the Presbyterian minister and declining patriarch to a large family of model pastors' children (save one) who are now grown and moved away. As the novel begins, Glory, the youngest, has returned to care for her aged and widowed father after being disappointed by the man she hoped to marry. Her prodigal brother Jack, lost to the family for twenty years, soon arrives without explanation. Still proud and secretive, Jack exerts a mighty pull on his father's heart--and on Glory's. Robinson illustrates the full sweep of human thought, from the sublime to the mundane, in prose as graceful and nuanced as anything in English. Never self-consciously beautiful or virtuosic, her sentences are most notable for their naturalness. (An online reviewer recently wrote that Robinson claims to do very little revising, that the sentences more or less come out of her head this way--yeah, we know.) Home is at one level theological; in long, kitchen-table dialogues, it explores the mystery of evil: what made Jack, alone among his siblings, mistrustful and destructive almost from birth? In a quieter register, it is also a social novel; in the shadows off stage we glimpse those for whom American experience has not been quite the idyll it is in Gilead. But the book's heart is personal and relational: its sweetest moments are in the gradually dawning relationship between the two world-battered siblings, and at its center is the wry, observant, gentle, un-self-pitying voice of Glory herself. Home is a powerful novel, tender, comic, and weighty. Like Gilead, it is a book to savor and to reread. It's not necessary to read the two books in order: for those who haven't read Gilead, the mystery of Jack's return will be revealed bit by bit--and those who have read it may feel a bit envious of this pleasure. Click here to buy the book. John Austin: Satellite Blvd.
Hailed as "everything good about modern pop/rock music" by Performing Songwriter Magazine, John Austin has recently released his sixth solo effort, Satellite Blvd. The album, a decade in the making, takes the listener on an Americana-based twilight tour of a landscape strange enough to call our own, and further solidifies Austin's gifts as a diagnostician of the contemporary zeitgeist. The album kicks off with "Cover Your Tracks," a barn-burner addressing unaccountability: "Steal it if you cannot pay. Shear the sheep when they kneel to pray. But if there's a heart that you must betray, send a basket or bouquet." Placed at the heart of the album, Satellite Blvd.'s title track can be seen as a traffic circle, not only in the literal sense of its oft repeated refrain ("You got me driving around..."), but also as the thematic hub from which the album's lyrical roads begin. "Blessing in Disguise," a lyrically playful yarn, depicts a narrator whose plans are blessedly frustrated by everyday reality: "See, I made a wrong turn, but I'm glad I did 'cause soon I'll have a beautiful wife. She had love to give to losers in life and I was a loser in life. Because of you, it was a blessing in disguise." Austin has always had a knack for keeping his lyrical addressees tantalizingly ambiguous. This remains true on Satellite Blvd., most noticeably in "Sunday Song," a lament for an unnamed love whose identity seems ever-changing: "This world is heartsick from the beginning. Man, it's a dirty trick to call it sinning. It's like the sound of a siren ringing in my ear. Sunday ain't what it used to be around here." On the album's other tracks, Austin addresses a variety of themes, from temporality and objectification to love, grace, and reconciliation. And though the tour down Satellite Blvd. reveals many dilapidated sights, the listener finds at road's end a trajectory of hope. The album was produced by Bret Hartley and--in addition to Austin and Hartley--includes musicians Brandon Bush, Paul Barre, and Keith Perissi. Satellite Blvd. is available from iTunes and Amazon.com, as is the highly acclaimed and recently re-released Byzantium (1996). Austin is currently working on a project with Pat Terry and will be touring on the east coast through early 2009. The announcement of tour dates and a redesigned website are forthcoming. For more information, click here. To download the album, click here. Poets on the Psalms, edited by Lynn Domina
For most readers, the psalms are at once magnificent poetry and a source of intense spiritual depth. But it's a rare treat to hear contemporary poets talk about why they of all people believe this is so. In her book Poets on the Psalms, poet Lynn Domina has done us all a service in collecting essays by contemporary poets, including Daniel Tobin, Angie Estes, Madeline Defrees, Robert A. Ayers, and others, that guide us into the heart of the psalms through pathways that are personal and particular--never cliché. Madeline Defrees's essay "The Secret Life of the Poetry and the Psalms" sets the tone for the anthology with a confessional account of her time in a Catholic convent. She lets us experience how the psalmody that framed her days "fed my spiritual life... [with] an underground current deep through the forest of the unconscious that renewed the reservoirs of my poetry" and explores how it continues to impact her craft. Jill Alexander Essbaum in "Lover, Dark and Dangerous" pushes the boundaries of the essay form with an erotic exploration of the psalms that concerns both the divine and the human. She writes: "Psalm--even the word sounds sexual. The palm of his hand and its balm, a small asp in secret, the lapse of alms giving, the same lap of God." Enid Dame, in "Psalm 22 and the Gospels: A Midrashic Moment and a Hope for Connection," writes an original explication of the connection between Jesus' crucifixion and Psalm 22, while launching an informative and intelligent dialogue on Christianity and anti-Semitism. And the collection closes with Daniel Tobin's soaring, unforgettable essay, "Lamentation, Poetry, and the Double Life." With his first few sentences, Tobin draws the reader into his world, shaken by the death of his father, while the psalms provide a structure for his exploration of grief and loss. Each essay in this collection grows out of the authors' varying backgrounds and personal histories, but the psalms expand the focus outward, providing the space for us to encounter them anew ourselves. Click here for more. Gallery WatchDomestic Vision: Twenty-Five Years of the Art of Joel SheesleyBrauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University is currently hosting the exhibit Domestic Vision: Twenty-Five Years of the Art of Joel Sheesley, which features more than thirty paintings by Sheesley on the theme of domesticity. "No doubt some of us hide our habits and create a false domestic facade, but for most, home is where we let our hair hang down," Sheesley says of his work. "So I have explored home and its domestic expansion into a wider geography of parks and playgrounds, streets and highways, ruins and wastelands." Joel Sheesley is a noted Midwestern realist painter and Professor of Art at Wheaton College, and has been featured as an Image Artist of the Month. The Domestic Vision exhibit is being accompanied by a new book of the same title edited by Gregg Hertzlieb, director of the museum. There will be a Gallery Talk with the artist on Wednesday, September 24, at 7:00 p.m. at the Brauer Museum. For more information, click here. Christian Worthington and Patrick Neufeld Exhibition
Works by Christian Worthington and Patrick Neufeld will be on display September 19-30, 2008 at the Cre8ery in Manitoba. The exhibition will include paintings, prints, and drawings that emulate and re-imagine traditional forms of Christian art. "What holds the show together, if anything does," write the artists, "is a judgment shared by Christian Worthington and Patrick Neufeld in favor of the canon of Christian-European art; or perhaps one might say a common deficiency in snobbishness, relative to the present standard, towards traditional art forms and themes; so that, for instance, a Rembrandt or Rothko might almost be encountered as a contemporary work, and almost be worth making again, or at least emulated as authoritative." There will be an opening reception on Friday, September 19 at 7:30 p.m. Cre8ery is located at 125 Adelaide Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba. For more information, go to www.christianworthington.com or www.patrickneufeld.ca or visit the gallery's website. Message BoardIf you have information other ImageUpdate readers might find interesting, share it here! Do you have a question that you hope a member of the ImageUpdate community might have the answer to? Ask it here. Have your messages posted by sending an e-mail to gwolfe@spu.edu. Seeking Information about Play FestivalsDoes anyone know of particular theater play festivals that seek out plays dealing with religious and spiritual themes in contemporary culture, or are at least interested in them? As I've written a piece I'm looking to submit it for possible venues and festivals that have interest in these themes. Thanks for getting back to me with any information. Contact Michael at meandmy@optonline.net. ImageNews -- The Scoop on Our Programs
Image Readings: Jeanine Hathaway Jeanine Hathaway is a poet who knows how to dance along the edge of the precipice. As a former Dominican nun, a mother, and a teacher, she understands that the stakes in life are high, that love is haunted by fear, faith dogged by doubt, and professional life complicated by ego. And yet her skeptical eye remains wedded to a lyrical sense of the ways in which the good can be experienced...and celebrated. Take a turn or two with her. Click here to listen. Subscribe to Image in Print and Get More Art, Fiction, Poetry, Essays, Interviews, and Every Good ThingIf you like reading about great new art and writing inspired by faith in ImageUpdate, and you're ready to get down to reading and seeing the stuff itself, it's time to subscribe to Image. Each quarter our editors comb the world of art and letters to bring you our favorite new work--work that respects transcendent mystery as well as the gritty truth of the material world that bears the divine imprint. A one-year subscription gets you four beautifully produced issues delivered right to your door. Ninety percent of the journal's content is not available on our website, but only through what we call "the sacrament of print." Click here to get the magazine Terry Tempest Williams calls "evocative and inspiring" and Bret Lott calls "the most meaningful literary journal being produced today." ImageUpdatePublisher: Gregory Wolfe ImageUpdate is the biweekly e-mail newsletter from Image, a quarterly print journal that explores the relationship between Judeo-Christian faith and art through contemporary fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, film, music, and dance. Each issue also features interviews, memoirs, essays, and reviews. ImageUpdate brings you news about books, CDs, organizations, websites, conferences, exhibitions, and tours--all of which inhabit the intersection between faith and imagination. ImageUpdate will also notify you whenever a new issue of Image is printed, an Image event is upcoming, or new content is posted to our website. Copyright © 2008 Center for Religious Humanism. All rights reserved. |
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Image is looking for a full-time Director of Development to build our charitable giving and help us grow to meet the increasing demand for our programs. By giving our fundraising efforts the attention and guidance they need, the Director of Development will enable Image to remain at the forefront of cultural transformation and broaden its influence. We are looking for a creative, hard-working professional who is passionate about Image's mission in the world of art and faith and skilled at motivating others to support that mission. The position will involve creating a development plan for Image, building relationships with donors and potential donors, making asks for major gifts, writing solicitation materials and grant proposals, and systematically evaluating the results of Image's fundraising initiatives. Qualifications include a bachelor's degree, excellent verbal and written communication skills, excellent relational skills, and an ability to work effectively and creatively, alone or as part of a team. Previous experience in development and/or experience working for a non-profit is a plus. Is this you or someone you know? To apply, send a CV; a cover letter that states how you came to know about Image and what you envision bringing to Image's development program, outlining your particular skills or areas of interest; and a 5-10 page sample of your prose writing. Mail to: Image, Attn: Director of Development Application, 3307 Third Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119. Or email to 
